All Children Will Dream
by The Quiller
Summary: /Because sometimes, dreams are all they have./ Hitsugaya Toushiro, before he was a Captain or even a boy from Rukongai, was once a nameless child dying on a plain of ice. Character Backstory.


_A Hitsugaya origin story._

. . .

_**all children will dream**_

. . .

Sometimes, when he dreams, he can remember his mother's face – thin lips forming words he doesn't understand, dark hair brushing against his forehead, and dark eyes gazing into the distance. He remembers her elegant hands, a noblewoman's hands, hesitating to touch him.

He doesn't remember her smile, which is odd, because he never forgets anything he sees.

He refuses to believe that she never smiled for him.

His own hair is whiter than death. His eyes are frozen, like ice, an unearthly blue-green color that has anyone unfortunate enough to look into his gaze looking away just as quickly. It hurts him, at first. Then he learns not to care. He learns not to cry. He walks with his head held high and his eyes fixed forward, meeting every scornful look with his own fierce challenge. It is a foolish choice – he has long since lost count of how many times they have beaten him bloody for his insolence – but pride is one of the few things they cannot take away from him. He clings to it with tooth and nail.

As he lays in the alleyway with a broken rib digging into his side every time he breathes, he swears that he will be strong in mind where he is weak in body.

He dreams of a day when he will no longer be a child. One day, his strength of body will match his strength of heart, and he will be able to fight back, to defend his pride with more than just words and will.

. . .

They call him a lot of different names.

'_Ame-furikozō,'_ the kinder villagers whisper. _Rain-bringer_. They see him walking through the streets in the pouring storm, his white hair matted to his face and his thin frame shivering from the cold, but not one of them opens the door as he goes past. They close their windows and turn away.

'_Oni no ko,'_ the less kind villagers snarl as they hurl him out into the dust of the streets. _Demon-child_. They don't give him his money back. He spits out the blood from his cut lip, and never tries to buy anything again. If they really think he's a demon child, then they shouldn't be surprised when he steals the food he needs from their stands. They might be bigger and stronger, but he is faster, and slips through their angry hands like a wisp of winter wind.

He doesn't give himself a name. No one has ever asked, so he has never needed one. Even the other street rats don't associate with him.

It's fine. He's not going to shed any tears over a bunch of jerks that won't shed any tears for him. He might be a child, but he is strong enough to survive on his own. Even if he had a name, he wouldn't tell it to them.

There is himself, there is everyone else, and that distinction is good enough for him.

But sometimes, on the coldest and darkest nights, as he curls up in the corner of the abandoned shack he has claimed as his own, he dreams of someone smiling warmly and calling a name he knows is his own.

. . .

Winter is his favorite season.

It's stupid, he knows. Winter is hard. The market place is closed and he can never get enough food. His threadbare yukata and the ratty blanket he fished out of the garbage barely make a difference against the knife-like winter winds that howl through the cracks in the walls. His teeth chatter so hard they threaten to break.

But he loves the snow.

He watches the sky and traces mighty serpentine shapes in the blinding blizzard. He is a little boy at heart, and though he has no mother to tell him stories and no friends to share them with, he can make up his own legends and dream his own dreams. He pretends he can hear a dragon's roar in the storm, and feel the beat of its wings in the wind.

The dragon drives everyone else away. He can walk through the streets under the dragon's wings, and there are no angry glares or hushed whispers. He wishes he was strong enough not to care, but he does. He walks outside with his ratty blanket wrapped around his narrow shoulders and his ice-bright eyes turned towards the sky, watching pure whiteness swallow up all the color in the world.

When he closes his eyes, he can imagine his own white hair and pale robes blurring into the dragon's storm, dissolving, disappearing, becoming one. Like this, he is free to fly on the wings of the wind. All of the water in the world is part of him. All of the heavens are his to command.

The snowflakes are almost sweet on his tongue, and he dreams that this is what freedom tastes like.

. . .

There is an old woman who lives in the poorest part of town and gives him amanattō when he visits.

He never speaks. She doesn't mind. Instead, she tells him stories of her own sons, long dead in the heroic wars of the past, which is why she lives alone. Her eyes are rheumy and almost completely blind, so she doesn't know who she is speaking to, but he listens all the same. Her porchstep is warm and her crinkled old hand on his head is warmer still. She senses his pride though, and never makes him stay longer than he is willing to – somehow, her old woman wisdom tells her that the only way to make sure he comes back is to never ask him to.

He hears a lot more than she says.

Her smile is happy even though her stories are sad. She teaches him about grander things that a child like him can't fully understand, about love and loyalty, about sacrifice and honor and duty. She speaks with tears in her crinkled old eyes as she speaks of her lost husband and sons, and of the era they laid their lives down to protect.

He silently listens to her stories and remembers them all.

When the old woman dies three months later, he digs her grave with his hands and feet because no one else will. It takes him a while to realize the burning, blurring of his eyes are tears that he has not shed in a long time. He buries her and never comes back. Her porch step has gone cold; there is nothing left for him here.

Her stories, however, stay with him. They give him something to think about when he lies alone, looking at the stars through the broken roof of the shack he lives in. He wonders what it feels like to believe in something strongly enough to die for it.

He closes his eyes and dreams of duty and devotion, of things bigger and better than the life of an abandoned child.

. . .

He's not old enough to question the meaning of his life.

He lives because he's alive and he doesn't need anything more complicated than that. Every time they knock him down, he will stand up again and again and again. He barely weighs four stone, but every ounce of him is as tough as nails. He's a fighter.

The other street rats avoid him. They try to bully him at first, because he is smaller than they are, but he fights like a hellcat, thrashing and clawing and biting with a ferocity that far outstrips even the brutality of their usual streetfights. His small, human lungs are too small to contain the dragon's roar that builds up in his heart. Each time he falls to the ground, he gets back up onto his feet, his unsettling blue-green eyes burning with inhuman intensity.

He never wins, of course. In the end, they are bigger and stronger, while he is smaller and alone. He fights with his back pressed against the wall as they surround him and beat him into unconsciousness. The next time they try to intimidate him, he does the exact same thing. By then, they've decided that he simply isn't worth the trouble - he has nothing of value to offer them except painful bruises and broken noses.

In the end, they back down.

He stands there proudly, with blood running into his eye and a loose tooth rattling in his mouth, as he watches them go. It's close enough to count as a victory. He has fought alone, survived alone, and for that, he will allow himself a flicker of childish pride.

His back still hurts from where he slammed it against the splintered wooden boards of the wall behind him, so he sleeps on his stomach instead.

On those nights, he feels that something or someone is missing, and quietly admits to himself that his back feels empty without a friend to guard it.

. . .

He knows that he has to be smarter and swifter than them to survive. He knows they couldn't care less if he lives or dies. He knows that he is always only half-a-step away from being beaten to death when he steals, or starving to death when he doesn't, and he has to balance on that thin line between the two if he wants to live.

His own actions are the only thing he can control.

He can't help what they think of him. _Demon-child._ He can't control anything but his own actions, but he knows that others are always looking for someone to blame. He cannot stop them. Their eyes follow him wherever he goes and he feels a prickle of unease in his heart.

People are falling ill. The prickle of unease in his heart grows.

Winter sets in, and the sickness worsens into a full-blown plague. Dozens are sick. No one knows why. Hysteria begins to set in as people begin getting desperate.

He is not sick. He is starved, he is filthy, and he is cold, but he is not sick. Some kind of heavenly providence protects him as the other street rats die all around him. It doesn't take long for someone to notice, nor does it take long for fear to become anger as the panicked town latches onto the first target for their blame.

It starts small. Thrown rocks that leave him cut and bleeding. Mothers ushering their own children away to the other side of the street as he passes. Doors being slammed in his face.

Ironic how Heaven spares him only for Earth to damn him.

It quickly gets worse. He barely escapes a savage beating in an alleyway. One man with a sick wife at home draws a knife on him in the streets and he barely escapes with his life – the cut across his leg refuses to stop bleeding even as he tears up his ratty blanket to bandage it as best he can. That night, he hears voices outside the shack and the flicker of firelight is the only warning he gets before a torch is thrown through the window.

There is a flash of heat as the dry timber bursts into flame.

Only his quick reflexes save him. He darts out the door before the flames can engulf him.

He comes face to face with an angry mob. The red firelight casts their faces in a demonic light, twisted with hate and fear, and he doesn't even stop to wonder why they are here.

Without pause, he turns on his heel and flees.

They chase him through the alleys and the streets as their voices rise in unintelligible shouts of death and retribution. He doesn't look back; he can't _afford_ to look back, not unless he wants to be ripped to shreds at their hands. The part of him that is still a child screams in pain and terror as his vision blurs with tears. As miserable as his life has been here, this town is his entire world, the only one he can remember – it hurts to know that he can never return to this place.

The other part of him, though, is just glad that he is so familiar with these alleys and shortcuts, because otherwise he wouldn't even stand a chance of escaping. He dashes away his tears angrily and ignores the searing pain in his injured leg as the only home he has ever known crumbles away into fire and darkness.

. . .

He doesn't stop running until even the furthest houses are out of sight.

Only then, as the adrenaline bleeds out of his veins and his thundering heart slows to a sluggish rhythm, does he finally allow himself to cry.

He doesn't bawl like other children his age. He doesn't kick. He doesn't scream.

Instead, he slides to the ground with his back against a tree and buries his face in his arms. His breaths come in irregular gasps as his shoulders shake uncontrollably. All of the weaknesses he carefully locked away start leaking from the corners of his eyes. He is helpless. He is scared. And most of all, he is lonely.

The tears freeze on his cheeks before they even have a chance to fall. He realizes belatedly how cold it is – he is wearing only his threadbare yukata, and his fingers and lips are already turning blue. His feet are torn to bloody shreds, but he hasn't noticed until now because they are also completely numb.

It's too cold. He is going to die if he stays out here.

His breath hitches as he immediately rejects the idea. He's too young to question the meaning of his life; simply being alive is enough reason to live. He pushes himself back onto his unsteady feet and begins the long and painful trek back towards town.

Then he stops.

And thinks.

Maybe he's not too young after all.

There's nothing back there for him. No one will cry if he dies. No one will care enough to bury him. A wave of nausea wells up in his throat - he doesn't want his body to rot in an alley, broken and forgotten. He can't go back.

So he stands there for a single, heavy heartbeat before he turns around and begins walking in the other direction.

Away from the town he once called home. Away from warmth, into the cold. It's a decision that can't be undone, but his mind is strangely calm. His heart is tranquil with a resignation that would break anyone's heart. No friends. No family. No name. All he has is an abandoned child's foolish pride. In the end, he must accept that his choice was never a choice between life and death. It is only a choice of _how_. He knows what is waiting for him back in the town.

Away from it, though, he has an entire horizon.

That's enough. That's all he wants anymore.

It has to be enough.

He doesn't know how long he walks – only that it is long enough for snow to start crunching softly under his feet. The world drifts by, dream-like and distant, and he can see a thousand lotus flowers of ice bloom under the night sky. The cold doesn't hurt him anymore - it embraces him gently and soothes away the pain of his weakening body. He has stopped shivering long ago.

The snow is soft when his legs finally give out on him. It catches him gently as he topples backwards.

This time, he doesn't get up. But that's okay. There isn't anyone left to fight.

Pure whiteness swallows up all the sins in the world. He can feel himself fading into that whiteness, dissolving, disappearing, and becoming part of something so much bigger and better than just his own short and meaningless life. The snowflakes catch in his eyelashes and flutter over his lips, lifting the faintest ghost of a smile.

This is the taste of freedom.

He's tired.

His eyes slowly close.

He dreams of winter's wings carrying him away from an endless plain of ice.

. . .

_Author's note:_

_Happy birthday, Shiro-chan!_

_This is my own version of what Hitsugaya's life was like before he got to Soul Society, based mostly on how we see the rest of the Rukongai villagers treating him in his canon backstory. Also, assuming Hitsugaya died somewhere between 100 and 150 years ago, that era of history in Japan was distinctly intolerant of oddities, and I don't think a child with Hitsugaya's coloring being abandoned is too unbelievable._

_If that was too depressing for you though, remember that he wakes up in Rukongai and meets Momo and Granny, who take care of him and stuff him full of watermelon and love! And, uh, temporarily forget the whole Aizen thing ever happened._

_Review and tell me what you think!_


End file.
